


Paladin

by anecdotalist



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, It's giant monsters and giant robots y'all, M/M, Pre-Slash, Qui-Gon makes an appearance but he's already dead by the time he does, Suspension of Disbelief Required, There's a lot of handwavey science stuff here, This is a Pacific Rim AU set in the Star Wars universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-11
Updated: 2018-03-11
Packaged: 2019-03-29 16:35:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13930986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anecdotalist/pseuds/anecdotalist
Summary: 968 years after the Ruusan Reformation, Anakin Skywalker was a 9 year old slave on Tatooine and Obi-Wan Kenobi a Jedi Padawan. The Trade Federation made plans to invade Naboo at the behest of the Sith Lord Darth Sidious, who had just killed his master, Darth Plagueis. It could have been the start of a significant galactic conflict.But before they could put that plan into action, colossal creatures appeared from the depths of Wild Space to consume the hydrogen in the stars. Suns started to die one by one and as they did, the planets orbiting them became uninhabitable. Millions of lives were lost.The Republic set aside their internal disagreements to try to create a weapon to fight the creatures. Five years and many failed attempts later, Paladins were built: mechanical fighters the size of capital ships, powered by kyber crystals, piloted by pairs of Jedi.





	Paladin

**Author's Note:**

> Ever since I saw Pacific Rim, I wanted to write a SW AU for it, because _Force bonds_ , you guys. The Jedi already have telepathic connections, it's the perfect set-up for them being co-pilots of giant mecha. Right??? I thought so, anyway. It's taken me awhile to figure out how this could work in the SW universe, because everything is already on such a grand scale. But here it is at last! And just in time for Pacific Rim Uprising. :D
> 
> This was beta'd by Dendral and then I made some further edits. Any mistakes remaining are mine.
> 
> Enjoy!

 

979 years after the Ruusan Reformation

11 years into the war

Location: Tatooine, Outer Rim planet

 

Anakin was returning from a scavenging trip with Kitster and the others when the sky suddenly darkened. Heart sinking, he stopped his landspeeder and squinted up. One of the twin suns was covered by a black shadow.

“Kriff, this is it, isn’t it?” Kitster moaned, stopping the anti-grav cart next to him. “This is the end.”

“No, it’s _not_ ,” Anakin snapped in reflex, heart pounding. “We’ll be _fine_.” But he didn’t believe it himself. He couldn’t move. He felt like his legs were locked in place.

He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the shape of their doom.

 _We might only have weeks to leave._ He didn’t know what would happen to their planet if one of their suns died. No one did.

The creatures had appeared when he was nine, and over the years, there were increasingly frantic reports on the Holonews about planets spinning wildly off into space when their suns’ gravitational pulls lessened, planets getting destroyed by their suns expanding, planets becoming covered by a layer of ice when their suns stopped emitting heat. The changes happened over weeks, months, years. Scientists thought that the creatures must be consuming all of the hydrogen in the stars’ cores, to cause them to die so quickly.

Which of those fates awaited Tatooine? It didn’t matter. The best chance they all had was to leave the planet. The only problem was that they’d been trying to build space-worthy ships out of rusted scraps for years and still weren’t near finished.

 _We’re not going to make it._ The thought filled him with despair.

But then—

Then a blur of white collided with the shadow in the sky. Its shape changed and Anakin thought he could make out the flare of immense wings. It was pushed far enough to the side that the sun peeked out again and Anakin felt the tight grip of fear loosen around his throat; he never thought he’d be _relieved_ to see both of Tatooine’s suns but here they were.

The two bodies separated and he saw them both clearly: one, a winged lizard-shaped creature with a long tail; the other, a humanoid shape that shone brightly in his other sense.

Kitster and the others hollered in jubilation. “It’s the Jedi!”

Anakin wasn’t sure if it was too early for celebration. Something...wasn’t right. The humanoid shape was moving stiffly in the sky, not nearly fast enough to keep up with the lizard creature. They were both, he knew from reports, about the size of a large heavy cruiser—a thousand meters or so in length.

The two locked together again, each visibly struggling to get the upper hand.

They seemed to grow in size as Anakin watched.

Then they became outlined in fire.

Anakin’s eyes widened. “They’re crashing through the atmosphere! Everybody, go! Go, go, go!” He tightened the strips of cloth covering his mouth and revved the engine of his bike. The sudden burst of speed thrust him back against the seat, a visceral reminder of his racing days.

There was a thunderous roar and the wind picked up across the desert. He fought to keep the bike steady.

Metal squealed behind and above them.

A loud boom resounded and the ground shook. Anakin flinched and risked a glance over his shoulder.

Clouds of sand ballooned up and out from the impact, kilometers away and yet not far enough. The blast of sand came faster and hit harder than any sandstorm he’d experienced; he didn’t even have time to shout a warning before he was being lifted from the ground and thrown into the air.

He landed with a painful thump and curled into a ball, shielding his eyes with his prosthetic hand. He prayed that the sun gods would be forgiving.

The sand settled and he sat up with a cough and a grimace. He fucking hated sand. It got everywhere. And in this case, it had pelted him painfully even through his clothes.

Some of the others had landed near him. The speeders they’d been using lay haphazardly overturned. The parts they had been carrying back would be scattered across the desert, he thought glumly. _We actually had some decent finds today, too._

He stripped his glove off and shook out the sand that had collected in it, then checked his arm to make sure that sand hadn’t gotten into any of the hinges or between the seams. It was an old, bulky metal prosthetic and he had been sorely tempted to swap it out for Threepio’s arm but a limb made for a droid was very different than one made for a human.

“Get everyone together, go back to the town. Warn the others,” he told Pala, though he was sure that everyone in Mos Espa had seen and felt the same things they had. They wouldn’t need any additional warning to head for the bunkers. He went over to a speeder, righting it with some difficulty. It started after a couple of tries and Anakin got on.

“What are you going to do?” Kitster asked. Anakin startled; he hadn’t realized that his friend was nearby, waiting for him.

“I need to go see what happened.” Anakin couldn’t say that he felt something tugging at him to go; Kitster would think he’d lost his mind. Nobody ever wanted to see one of those creatures. Reporters on the holonet called them by different names, depending on what region of the galaxy they were reporting from—Star Eaters, Harbingers of Death, Night Flyers, Space Worms, Sun Killers. Here on Tatooine, they called them Sun Dragons after the old legends. They were supposed to live in the core of the suns, not eat them. But, everyone had agreed, it was close enough.

“And what are we supposed to tell your mom?” Kitster demanded, incredulously. “That you went off to try to fight a _karkin’ sun dragon_ with a measly _speeder bike_? She’s gonna have our heads!”

“I’ll be fine,” he dismissed through the pounding of his heart. Then, before he took off, added, “Take care of her, Kit,” just in case.

Kitster watched him dubiously as he drove off but didn’t try to stop him.

The kilometers passed by in a blur. It was hard to judge time and distance in the desert, where everything looked the same. The plume of smoke that he assumed was from the crash never looked like it was getting any closer.

He felt like he had traveled through the desert for hours, and then he came upon the site of the crash suddenly: a large, scaly wall loomed up in front of him, rising out of the sand dunes.

He pushed his tinted goggles up onto the top of his head and saw that it was dark brown and covered in some kind of shiny oil-like substance. He froze, swallowed up by instinctual terror. He’d never seen a living creature this large. He couldn’t even see what part of the sun dragon it was.

When it didn’t move, he cautiously drove on, giving it a wide berth and looking back at it every few seconds. Maybe the crash had killed it, he thought. Hoped. He couldn’t tell if it was still breathing.

He slowed down when he saw the giant Paladin lying in the sand, and gaped at it in dismay as he drove around it. It looked as large as the sun dragon but there were cracks in the white and green plating, smoking holes in the armor that revealed the inner electrical wiring and metal casing, broken gears and twisted metal where the right arm should be. Part of the head was caved in, the transparisteel on the face cracked and broken on the right side.

The ground trembled. Anakin looked over and cursed; the sun dragon was moving. It must have only been dazed by the fall.

He got off the speeder and ran towards the head of the Paladin, to do what he wasn’t sure. See if the Jedi inside were still alive, he supposed. See if there were any weapons in there that Anakin himself could use.

He scrambled up into the head and surveyed the damage. It was...bad. Red emergency lights flickered and cast an ominous glow about the cockpit. Astromech droids beeped at each other as they extinguished electrical fires and connected at different ports trying, Anakin assumed, to get everything functional again.

He became aware of a low keening sound and looked around until he located its source: one of the Jedi pilots—wearing beige-colored armor that was scratched and dented in places—hanging limply in a metal apparatus in the center-left of the cockpit. Lines of green light ran up and down their arms, lining each of their fingers, circling their waist and going down to their feet. Their left leg was bent oddly. Their gloved hands clutched at their helmet. A sense of _PAINGRIEFSHOCK_ radiated from them in waves.

Anakin glanced over at the other pilot, bigger and taller than the first but dressed in the same colored armor. The metal apparatus that this pilot was connected to was bent terribly out of shape. Judging by the amount of blood splattered on their armor and the absolute stillness of their body, they were dead.

He looked out through the viewscreen and saw to his horror that the sun dragon was getting up. It moved slowly and was bleeding in several places, a bright green fluid that sizzled and smoked when it dripped onto the sand.

Anakin turned back to the pilot and pulled down the strips of cloth covering his mouth and nose. “Hey!” he shouted. The droids directed inquisitive sounds at him; he ignored them. He hurried around to the pilot’s side and gripped their shoulder, shook them. “Hey, snap out of it!” There was no response beside that keening. “Come on!”

Anakin studied the piloting console desperately. It looked a little like the podracers he used to race in some respects, but not at all in others. There was a glowing blue crystalline plate just off-set to the right and a panel of switches and levers on the left. The other pilot looked like they once had a flipped version of the set-up, but their crystalline plate was green and, now, dark and cracked down the middle. The rest of their console was missing.

Anakin slammed his hand down on the console with a groan of frustration. Maybe if he flipped enough switches, something would happen.

Or, he forcibly reminded himself, he’d overload the system and they’d blow up.

Which, if the explosion took out the sun dragon too, might be worth it. But Anakin had every intention of living for as long as he could. He’d been left behind to die but he’ll be karkin’ damned if he let that happen while he still had options.

He looked back at the pilot, who had dropped their hands and gone quiet. “Hey, are you okay?” he asked. There was no response.

He reached up, found the clasps for the helmet, and removed it. Under it was the lightly stubbled face of a human male, auburn hair slicked back, eyes squeezed shut. His skin looked ashen. “Hey,” he tried again, quieter. He cupped the pilot’s cheek with one hand, hoping that physical contact would bring him out of his shock. “Come on. Please. The monster’s still alive. You need to snap out of it and finish the fight.”

There was still no outward response. The waves of _PAINGRIEFSHOCK_ got stronger.

The sun dragon was on its feet now, shaking out its wings and thumping its tail against the sand.

Anakin focused back on the pilot, lost in a maelstrom of emotions. He’d always been able to sense strong emotions in those around him. His mother said that it was a gift. He had never tried to directly affect them, though; never knew if he could or should, but he didn’t think he had a choice now. If he couldn’t get this pilot to finish the fight, the sun dragon was going to go after the settlements, or take off and try to get to their suns again.

He opened himself up to the man’s emotions, let them wash over him. They pulled him in and for awhile, he was disoriented amid the chaotic eddies of color. Then he gathered himself and dove in, searching for the source of the pain. It led him to something that looked like a rope of shining light that was fading quickly, torn and frayed at the end, unraveling down its length. It disappeared into the ether but that didn’t matter. It was this part, he knew somehow, that was radiating pain like an inflamed wound.

It took him a few tries but he imagined that he had hands in this incorporeal space, that he was gathering up the wayward strands and twisting them together. He imagined himself holding a firestarter and burning the end to seal it and keep the strands from coming apart again, like he would with a physical rope. The sense of pain faded; still present, but no longer the only thing he could feel.

 _:What are you—who are—how did you get in here?:_ It was a Core-accented voice, coming from everywhere at once. It sounded dazed and surprised. It was the pilot, Anakin somehow knew.

_:I’m Anakin. You weren’t responding. I had to do something. I’m sorry.:_

_:Psychic shock, from the breaking of a bond,:_ the voice said, like Anakin would know what that meant.

“Thank you.”

Anakin startled at hearing the voice out loud and opened his eyes. He found himself staring into gray-blue eyes that looked tired, grateful, and resigned. He eased back as the man gingerly straightened up.

“The monster’s still alive,” Anakin told him. The pilot looked out the viewscreen and his lips tightened grimly. “You have to kill it.”

“I can’t,” he said with a shake of his head. “This is meant to be piloted by two Jedi. I’m not strong enough to do it on my own and we sustained significant damage. There was another team not far behind us. They’ll be able to finish it off when they arrive.”

“When they arrive? But this thing is here now! What if it goes towards the town? There’s hundreds of people living there. You can’t just sit back and wait!.”

The pilot’s eyes snapped back to him. “What?” Then he sucked in a pained breath and clutched his right side.

“Are you okay?” Anakin’s eyes widened in alarm.

The pilot just grunted in response. “There shouldn’t be anyone here,” he wheezed. “This part of the Outer Rim was supposed to have been evacuated four years ago.”

“It was,” Anakin said bitterly. “Everyone who could leave, did. But they didn’t have room to take everything, so they left the slaves.” He could still remember Watto, looking as close to regret as he ever got, handing him and his mom the remotes to their slave transmitters and wishing them luck before boarding the ship that would take him and the other owners off planet.

“I’m sorry,” the pilot offered.

“Don’t be sorry. You didn’t have anything to do with that. Just kill _that thing_ before it destroys everything.” But the pilot was shaking his head again before Anakin even finished.

“No one’s ever been able to pilot one of these by themselves. It requires too much Force for any one Jedi to channel.”

“You have to at least try!” Anakin could feel himself getting hysterical. “ _Please_. My mom’s in that town. My friends. You can’t let them die! Please, you have to do something.”

The pilot surveyed the cockpit around them. As if in answer to an unspoken question, one of the droids rolled over and displayed a holographic status report. Anakin didn’t know what everything on the list was but from what he could understand, the Paladin was functional and all the literal fires were out. As if to emphasize that, the red emergency lights shut off.

Seconds later, the console also went dark, the lights on the pilot’s armor flickered off, and the quiet hum of running computers stopped. The only light in the cockpit now came from the suns shining through the viewscreen; the only sound both of their breaths. Anakin’s gaze darted around in alarm but the pilot didn’t seem worried.

“Thank you, Arfour,” the pilot said quietly. He looked over at the body of his co-pilot and Anakin saw his eyes hardening. Then he studied the control console in front of him and seemed to come to a decision. “Okay,” he muttered. “One last fight, Kenobi. You can do this.”

Anakin startled. Kenobi? This was Obi-Wan Kenobi? The other pilot must have been Qui-Gon Jinn then. The Jinn-Kenobi team have been— _had_ been—one of the most successful defenders of this sector of the Outer Rim for six years. They were on the Holonews audiofeed all the time. Anakin didn’t think he’d be quite so _human_ in person; the two of them, like all the Jedi, had always seemed larger than life.

“You should get out of here,” Kenobi said.

Anakin glanced doubtfully outside. “If it’s all the same to you, I think I’d rather stay here. There’s no place to hide out there and I don’t want to get accidentally stepped on.”

One corner of Kenobi’s lips quirked up and Anakin felt a small thrill go through him that he could make the famed pilot smile. He, twin suns help him, had somehow mentally connected with said famed pilot when he didn’t actually know what he was doing at all. _Kriffin’ hell, what if I had hurt him_ even more _?_ He resolved to never do something like that again without thinking it through first.

“Very well,” Kenobi agreed. “Then hold onto something.” He flipped several of the switches on the console and the cockpit was bathed in soft blue light, the gentle hum of computer systems powering on filling the silence. Green light lit up along Kenobi’s armor again.

Anakin looked around but there weren’t a lot of handholds available in the immediate vicinity. The droids were locking back into their stations at the rear wall, but Anakin didn’t want to be that far away from Kenobi. He ended up grabbing onto the metal apparatus behind the pilot, making sure to stand out of the way so he could move freely.

Kenobi set both hands onto the blue crystalline plate. Its glow brightened when they made contact with it. He bent his head down. Then he raised his left hand off the plate and slowly, deliberately straightened it downwards, as if he was pushing against something offering great resistance. The green lights on his hand and arm brightened.

After an interminably long, expectant pause, the Paladin started shifting. The cockpit rose unsteadily with a protesting creak.

Sweat rolled down Kenobi’s temple and his body shook. Anakin could feel something in the air around them, something heavy; an invisible energy being pooled from all around them and channeled through Kenobi. He thought that if he concentrated on it, he would be able to _see_ the currents of energy with that same sense that allowed him to know others’ emotions.

Kenobi braced himself with his right hand, lifted his right leg with effort and pushed it down with a grunt; the cockpit rose up more. Then his arm gave out and he collapsed over the console with a pained groan. The cockpit dropped suddenly.

“Blast!” he panted. The shaking worsened.

“What happened? What’s wrong?” Anakin stepped forward, careful not to bump into Kenobi’s left arm, which was still stiffly straightened downward at his side, green lights glowing bright. He had a feeling that that arm was the only thing keeping the Paladin upright.

Kenobi shook his head. Then he said, “I’m fairly sure my ribs are cracked on the right side. My left leg’s broken. We’re functionally down to one arm and one leg and I can’t get Maverick to stand up.”

Anakin swallowed, feeling guilty. The pilot should have been in a bacta tank and instead, he was exacerbating his injuries trying to keep fighting all because Anakin had asked him to. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Maybe—”

“No.” Kenobi turned his head to look at him and his brows were furrowed in pain. Sweat gathered at his temples. His eyes were limned in a bright blue glow. He grimaced, but his tone was almost teasing as he asked, “Come now, where’s that fighting spirit from earlier? We’re not giving up just yet.”

“Okay,” Anakin said, feeling a rush of something he couldn’t name for the pilot.

“Unlock my left boot from the rig and stand on it yourself. I’m going to need you to support me on that side.”

Anakin bent and did as Kenobi instructed. The lights on his leg dimmed as soon as it was detached. Kenobi slowly shifted his leg off the rig with a hiss. Anakin stepped onto it himself, carefully balancing one foot on the small platform and one foot on the rod that connected it to the metal spine behind Kenobi.

Kenobi leaned his shoulder against his chest, arm held stiffly between them. Anakin felt him closing his hand into a fist and pressing it against his upper thigh. He wrapped his right arm around Kenobi’s waist, locking his fingers into a tight grip on the man’s hip to keep him securely against him.

He felt gratified when Kenobi rested his weight on him and the trembling lessened. He could see and feel the man breathing more easily once he was able to shift the pressure off of his right side. He could do this. He could be the Jedi’s support.

Kenobi straightened back up, closing his eyes and taking several deep breaths which got steadier and steadier.

Anakin reached over and covered his right hand, still on the crystal plate, to give him some encouragement. But as soon as their hands touched, he was pulled back into that mental space again. This time, Kenobi was _present_ everywhere and there were multi-colored streams of light flowing into a shining prism.

 _:What’s all this?:_ he wondered.

_:Anakin, what are you—Oh. You’re Force-sensitive. Of course.:_

_:What does that mean? ‘Force-sensitive’?:_

_:It means,:_ Kenobi’s thought was colored with hope, shining bright and clear and dazzling, _:that we might be able to win this.:_

 _:What? How?:_ Anakin asked, and then, _:Wait. You thought you weren’t going to kriffin’_ win _?:_

Kenobi ignored the last question, which was just as well because Anakin didn’t want to think about that right now.

 _:Just tell me what to do,:_ he said.

_:See how I’m gathering the Force to me and directing it into the kyber crystal?:_

He knew without knowing how he knew that the streams of light were what Kenobi was referring to as the Force and the prism was the crystal. _:Yes.:_

_:We need more of it in order to fully power a Paladin.:_

_:Okay.:_ Anakin collected as much of the light streams as he could and shoved them at the prism.

Kenobi startled, then pushed back in alarm. _:Whoa. No, not like_ that _. We’ll overload the crystal and break it if we send this much all at once.:_

 _:Then_ how _? You just said to get more, you didn’t say how much.:_ Anakin heard the frustration in his thought and mentally winced. _:Sorry.:_ The last thing he wanted to do was piss off the pilot so much that he refused to help them.

 _:I’m not going to leave, not while there are people in danger.:_ Kenobi reassured. _:And I apologize for not being specific enough. It’s been awhile since I’ve taught younglings.:_ The thought came with a mental image of a group of children, paying close attention to something Kenobi must have been telling them.

 _:I’m not a child!:_ Anakin was indignant. He was twenty, far from a child.

 _:I know. I just meant that you’re untrained, like our younglings are.:_ Kenobi sounded amused. _:Here, watch what I’m doing.:_ He demonstrated what he wanted and Anakin mimicked him, gathering smaller bundles of light and feeding them steadily, slowly to Kenobi who in turn fed them into the prism.

_:It’s a mental representation of the crystal. There’s actually two of them, working in synchrony to power the Paladin.:_

Anakin was distantly aware of said Paladin standing up in the physical world, a little shaky but able to brace itself in the sand. In the mental landscape, he came across one stream of light that was solid gold. When he touched it, he got a sense of both himself and of _Obi-Wan Kenobi._

 _:Oh.:_ Kenobi thought with a touch of wonder. _:A bond.:_

_:What’s that?:_

_:I’ll explain later.:_ Aloud, he said, “Here, Anakin. Keep your hand on the plate and keep channeling the Force.” He slid his own hand out from under Anakin’s and pulled up a menu of weapons on the holographic screen in front of them.

Outside, the sun dragon had noticed their movement and seemed to be bracing itself for a charge. Now that they were both upright, Anakin saw with a sinking feeling that the sun dragon was actually bigger than them.

“Hey, Kenobi. Whatever you’re doing, you better hurry. That thing’s about to come running at us,” he warned.

“Mhm,” was all Kenobi said. He selected something that looked like a sword, except with a blade that was shaped like a stick. Then he laid his hand on top of Anakin’s on the console.

Anakin watched as the fingers of the Paladin’s left hand reconfigured with a grinding of gears into a cylinder that was open on one end.

The sun dragon leapt at them and knocked them flat on their back. Anakin cursed as he lost his footing; he’d have flown back and hit the back of the cockpit if it wasn’t for Kenobi’s arm wrapping around his waist.

“Thanks,” he gasped.

The red emergency lights flickered on again. The viewscreen in front of them was filled with the sharp teeth and open maw of the sun dragon. The cockpit rattled every time it pulled back and rammed forward again, trying to crush the rest of the Paladin’s head in. Anakin’s heart pounded with adrenaline. All the creature needed to do was get a good bite on the broken edges of the transparisteel and it’d be able to rip through the rest of the cockpit.

“You okay?” Kenobi asked calmly, apparently unruffled by their imminent deaths staring them in the face.

Anakin’s legs scrambled until he found purchase on the spine of the metal apparatus. He wondered what kinds of situation Kenobi had been in that _this_ didn’t faze him. His hand was still on the crystal only because the Jedi was holding it there, steady and sure. He re-adjusted his grip on Kenobi’s hip and nodded, taking in a deep breath and letting it out shakily. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

Kenobi let go of his waist and brought his hand in front of them. “Now watch. This is how we kill these creatures.”.

Anakin felt him concentrate, saw him close his left hand into a fist, felt the Force being funneled into the Paladin’s left hand-turned-cylindrical- _hilt_ , heard the monster screech in pain.

Kenobi frowned in concentration. He slowly swung his fist up as if he was pushing against resistance, and the monster gurgled, then slid off of them in two pieces.

Anakin could see now what the weapon was that Kenobi had chosen: a giant glowing rod of blue-green-white plasma energy that was being emitted from the Paladin’s left hand.

“Jabba’s balls,” Anakin breathed. “What is that?”

“A lightsaber, magnified a thousand times. It’s a bit much,” Kenobi admitted. “But it’s what works best.” He slowly dropped his fist and relaxed it, lifted his right hand off the crystal plate and held it out to Anakin. The saber switched off and they were left in a mix of blue light from the console, red flashing lights from the alarms, and the bright yellow glow of Tatooine’s suns. “And you can call me Obi-Wan.”

Anakin shook his hand a little awkwardly with his left; he didn’t want to let go of Obi-Wan to use his right, and not just because he didn’t want to fall. “Anakin Skywalker. Nice to meet ya, Obi-Wan.” He grinned cheekily. Then he realized how close he still was to the pilot and blushed. He hastily turned his head and looked outside.

When he saw just the broad expanse of sand and clear blue sky, he couldn’t hold back a small, disbelieving laugh. “We did it. I can’t believe it. That was...I can’t believe we karkin’ did it.”

He glanced at Obi-Wan out of the corner of his eye and saw him grin. He still looked exhausted but the smile lit up his face, made him look years younger. He was beautiful.

Then Obi-Wan looked over at the other pilot and his shoulders dropped; the life seemed to drain out of him. “Qui-Gon,” he murmured sadly. He stretched over and touched the other man’s arm gently, biting his lip.

“I’m sorry,” Anakin said, feeling like an intruder.

“You didn’t have anything to do with it,” Obi-Wan said, an echo of what Anakin himself had told him just minutes ago. After a pause, he said, “Qui-Gon was my Jedi Master for twelve years before the creatures came. I was supposed to take my trials the year that they appeared.”

Anakin nodded as if he knew what any of that really meant. It was clearly something that was important to Obi-Wan.

“Then, after the Paladins were built, we became battle partners. He was like a father to me.” Obi-Wan fell quiet again and Anakin hugged him tightly, hooking his chin over Obi-Wan’s shoulder. “I need to comm Mace,” he said suddenly. “Tell him what happened. That we need to be picked up. Maverick Guardian’s going to need a lot of repairs.”

“What about the rest of us?” Anakin asked nervously. Was this it? Was Obi-Wan just going to leave now that he’d finished his job?

“We’ll evacuate everyone. Bring them to the safe zone.”

Anakin sighed in relief.

“You...you should come to the Shatterdome,” Obi-Wan suggested hesitantly. “You’re very strong in the Force. We could use your help.”

“I don’t…” Anakin trailed off, remembering the fear and the terror he had felt looking into the face of a creature thousands of times his size, who could easily crush him, who ate the essences of stars for dinner.

“At least think about it,” Obi-Wan urged.

“Okay.” Then Anakin remembered: “You said we have a bond?”

Obi-Wan nodded. “A spontaneous Force bond. Very rare.”

“So what will happen between us? With this thing tying us together?”

“Nothing necessarily has to happen. We can each go our separate ways and we’ll be fine.”

Anakin cocked his head. “But if we decide to go the same way?”

“The bond will help us work together. We could be a great team. ”

That felt...not wrong, but incomplete. Anakin slowly shook his head. “No. We would be,” he felt out the words with that other sense, with the Force, “the _best_ team.”

 _That_ felt right.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!!! <3
> 
> (I ~~sort of~~ , ~~maybe~~ , definitely have ideas/plans for more in this verse, but if I do write them, they'll be separate one-shots and this will be the first of a series rather than a multi-chaptered fic.)


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